Wraith of the Damned
by Alex Warlorn
Summary: Back from the dead! Metalla, robbed of his honor of killing Sonic years later seek to statisfy himself with Sonic's bastard son Sonnu, with the help of Sonnu's robotcized half sister Tiana! Ending summary up. Thank you Joshura.
1. Metalla

  
This is the in-between story of Joshusa Kode's MASTER PIECE, Mobius Sequence, Sonic Resurrection and Silver Plague and Burning Mobius, if haven't read those already, quite wasting your time and read those and come back here! They deserved to be read, they are ART. Note, parts of this was written by Josh Kode himself. This is ONLY the prologue. 

"It's not fair!" Screamed the machine though his voices box. The machine flashed though the sky in a blue metallic streak all the time screaming the same thing over and over. Emotions he programming was never meant to process flooded though him, (then again his programming was never meant to process emotions at all.) Loss, anger, longing, emptiness, frustration, and above all the overwhelming sense of being denied, cheated, robbed.   
Both he and Silver MK III had heard the information at the same time. Metalla had never liked Silver, Silver saw Sonic just as a target to terminate, and Metal did too of course, but Sonic couldn't die, mustn't die, until he had proven what he had to prove. Metalla had to prove who the better of them was, the more skilled the faster, the smarter, he was going to better him! Anyone could kill Sonic; Metalla wanted more than that, in fact anyone had! Metal knew it had to a trick; something the hedgehog had done to convince his enemies he was no longer a threat. But no, both he and Silver had checked, Sonic was dead. Sonic was dead. Sonic was dead. Sonic was dead! The fact spun in Metalla's mind like a hideous chant.   
"NO! You can't be dead! You can't!" Metalla denied, Silver had been more accepting. Metalla had found him an hour later, he had self terminated, laser blast at full power though the core system.   
"No! No! No! No! NOOOOOO!" Metalla ran right though a solid rock cliff and came out the other side, he didn't notice.   
"Why! Why? Why did you have to die?" The robot demanded of the dead.   
"How could you of let ANYONE kill you except me?! It was supposed to be me from the beginning! Not Eggman, not Robotnick, not Chaos, not Enjack! It was always destine to be me! Such a worthless way to die, laser shoot to the chest, such an ORDINARY way to die. You deserved more! Why! WHY!!"   
Metal burst upward though the cloud cover not caring where he went or where he was. Metal cut off the power to his voice box and did a dive-bomb for a mountain peak. Doing a perfect landing he began to shake, his fists clenched. Metal would of cried then and there if he had tear ducts, but had not been part of his design. Even his face could no express with was two solid pieces of metal, his eyes were unmoving, his cheeks unchanging, his voice was his only outlet, and even then he was limited to it's soul less droning except for that raging shirk. Robotnick had built him as an assassin nothing more, no less than that, he was supposed to be a mindless weapon designed to kill and only kill. His target was dead, why did he feel empty? Why did he feel at all! Damn Robotnick, he had built so much of Sonikku's mind and memories into him that he began to feel Sonic's emotions shortly after construction. He had been design to better than Sonikku, he knew that, no he WAS better than Sonic, he was more skilled, faster, quicker reaction time. But for unless he proved it, he would be remember as nothing more than copy of Sonic. Metal-Sonic.   
Metalla screamed as far as his speaker would allow him. He had been stripped of everything, everything that had given him purpose and worth. Maybe he should take Silver's example and- NO! He would not take the coward's way out! That would be the final insult, Metal-Sonic the coward to the last!   
Metalla was still quivering; he was alone, no master, no subordinates, no enemies, no allies. He could avoid Scor's troop easily here, but for what purpose? Sonic was dead. Sally was dead. Sally? Why should he even think of her! Damn it! So much of Sonic emotions were built into him he was driven to the point of insanity, try to figure out where Sonikku ended and where Metalla began!   
"It's just not fair . . .," Metalla said again this time in a whisper.   
"Any of it, just not fair."   
Hours later, Metalla finally moved from his spring coiled position and scanned the area for a suitable location. There was a small cave in the rock face zero point two kilometers north east of him roughly a meter and a half in diameter; Metalla was at the mouth in a matter of seconds. There were no living things of any kind above the bacteria level inside the small stone cavern. Entering without a second thought, once inside, Metalla turned, and released a controlled repulsion field causing the mouth of the mock stone tomb to collapse. 

__________________________   
  
It was perhaps, years before Metalla reached light again. The cold embrace of the stones dug into his metal hide, all he could do was brood there, in his tomb. Metalla lost track of time, the days and nights passing like flashes. He needed no sleep, no food, what he needed was in a tomb . . .like him.   
Metalla's brain was designed to receive transitions, most of witch he wrote off a pointless, useless information form Scor's distant Empire that he stored in his memory with barley processing it. He existed now for nothing, and nothing mattered but Sonikku. Fastest think alive, the works ate at him, dug into his silicon soul until it made him numb to the pain, numb to everything. Until he heard the words again . . .Scor was dead . . .Sonnu lived. . Sonnu! Sonic had no children by Sally; they were to far apart in genetics, but this . . .had to be his seed! This creature, destroyed the Emperor's turrets, decimated his empire, and lived beyond it. Metalla wrenched himself from the rock . . .he had a new target, a new existence.   
Metalla's body was a perpetual motion machine, unlike other machines that wore out from constant movement; Metalla's body depended on it. After almost twenty years of performing no action beyond thinking, it shouldn't of surprised the metal assassin when after his initial break though his self made prison that his body crumpled almost helpless on the hard beige rock.   
But 'almost' was the key word in the robot's mind. His systems were designed to repair themselves, or rather, he had modified them to cut down on his matinance needs, just as living things muscles regenerated from use, so too could his systems repair themselves only from use. Power was no problem, the synthetic Chaos Emerald installed as his power source in the Final Eggman gave him all the energy he needed. He just needed to start moving, and time. Ordering one arm to stretch out in front of him towards the source of the signal Metalla grabbed hold of the stone with his claws and started to drag his body forward. His ultra sensitive internal systems check told him his arm efficiently had already increases by 0.0001%. Anyone else would of been seriously discourage by this, but with a determination that bordered on obsession, Metalla order the other arm to move and drag him forward, and his legs to shuffle his body across the rocks.   


Flames, comments, good or bad reviews, suggestions, reactions, occasional constructive criticism all welcome. Spelling corrections also welcome as long as you tell what you think of the story itself too.   
  



	2. Tiana

This is the in-between story of Joshusa Kode's MASTER PIECE, Mobius Sequence, Sonic Resurrection and Silver Plague and Burning Mobius, (you can find them here on ff.net) if haven't read those already, quite wasting your time and read those and come back here! They deserved to be read, they are ART. Hey! Would a elitist perfectionist like me say that about anyone? Note, parts of this was written by Josh Kode himself. 

_ -We are given purpose at the point of our birth, you must seek out your purpose, and often you fail. Can you really say we are worse off than you? -_

-Badnick E-117 "Sigma" before dismantlement at the end of the Final Eggman War. 

Metalla didn't know how long he took, his internal clock kept track of time of course, but he was too singled minded in the course of things to check it. It could have been ten weeks or twenty years, and he no estimation for at which extreme it was to be held at. His self-repair system was slow, but it preformed its task. His systems were atrophied but his core processor and memory systems were all 100% status, thank god. The last thing he needed to worry about was himself going loopy.

But when he entered the area his memory told him was the Great Forest, Metalla began to think perhaps his internal diagnostic was malfunctioning.

Sand and ashes as far as his scanners could reach. The hot sun creating a glare in the visible light spectrum. The Great Unknown was a desert of rocks and bolders, but it was more alive than this. His scanners picked up minute amounts of plant life struggling valiantly up though the sand and ashes, but everything about the scene before him screamed dead, not death, but simply dead, the dying was over, there was nothing left of what his memory files showed of the former dwelling place of his organic counter-part. Metalla speculated, that if there was indeed a deity as many Mobians, Overlanders and humans speculated, that if this deity had pointed it's finger at this place and said, 'dead' it would not of looked more life less.

Metalla dug though his memories and remembered Scor's broadcasts about the burning of the Great Forest, not public of course, but Metalla's systems were designed to handle coded transmissions. It was so simple. Just burn it to ashes. The robot wondered why his creator had not thought of the same thing when the Freedom Fighters had used it as hiding place. Then, after the burning was though, dump sand on the whole thing and that would be that.

Metalla's files showed there had been only one public transmission concerning what had happened here. And that was when Scor had renamed the place the Fool's Desert. Metalla wondered which fools he was talking about.

'Emperor' Scor had gone on a massive campaign to eliminate Sonic from the recent history books. Destroying anything link to him, the newly developed power ring generators and the Great Forest just being the first among them. Then came the elimination of all sports involving running and then all music with a high paced beat. Metalla of course, being a machine built in Sonic's image was high on Scor's target list, but he was an enemy for a far greater crime, he remembered the truth. Metalla had considered for a few nano- seconds to avenge Sonic, and his stolen victory, to topple Scor's planet wide empire to the foundations. But to what purpose? Sonic was dead. There was no longer a point to his existence, but the final oblivion of deactivation frightened him. But if this Sonnu was indeed Sonikku's son, then he had at last found that elusive reason he so desperately sought for his existence.

Metalla considered to go direct to Mobotroplious, (Metalla was surprised by the fact Scor had not follow Robotnick's example and renamed the city Scoroplious.) but he knew there was somewhere else he had to go first, he didn't know why he should go there, it was part of Sonic's life not his. But he had knowledge of it and had never been there. Though he knew he would find only rubble and dust he had to go there, to Knothole. He would remind himself of what he had been robbed of, before he took his victory.

_What is it like to kill someone and not even have a choice? It's funny. When your one of them. You don't think of it as killing. You just lock onto a target and fire the damn thing. It's no different to you to use the arm mounted machine gun on your right limb to terminate a target, then to use the hand on your left limb to fetch Him a cup of tea._

_ -_Pink Flicky Bird, perilously E-102 'Gamma' end of the second Eggman war.

Like in a dream she walked, one foot in front of the other, she didn't have the concentration to race at the blinding speed that was her birth right, ever since she had been born, her memory had enjoyed playing with her, slipping in and out of her mind, or rushing to the surface forcing her to relive with precise detail what had come before, what the chameleon had done to her, and memories, that were not even her's.

_Sally looked at the controls, she had spend the last two nights memorizing what they had stolen from Robotnick's mainframe, they were the same. They had been lucky the nanite bomb hadn't gone off when it had landed like it was suppose to, or they all would of woken up with ultra thin chrome plating for skin._

_ If there was one thing about Eggman Sally had realized she could count on from his last two wars on organic life, was that his weapon pretesting was always insufficient and moronically shallow. And leave it to him to put an outdated trigger on his latest super weapon. Sally knew Robotnick's machines would be here soon to record the effects of the weapon for posterity. They already knew everything there was to know about the weapon, (it was surprising what one could do with a group of computer hackers against a megalomaniac who had never heard of the term, 'hard copy'.) Also if it turned up missing, the Eggman would just drop another one, and there was no telling if their luck would hold a second time. She had to make him think that the weapon was useless in the field that was the only way to stop this weapon._

_ Sally typed in at the controls at the side of the bomb, (it had been a grace of God that Eggman had never trusted his own robots enough that all weapon functions were done manually and not machine to machine interface) set the thing for overload, watch the temperature bar rise past the melting point of the metal the nanites were made of and imagine as the tiny demons inside died in the millions until none remain. Feel satisfaction as the thing heats up on the verge of exploding but not the way it was meant to. And run like hell giving herself plenty of margin lacking the super human speed of her mate. Duck and covering, covering her ears and opening her mouth, as the thing explodes, not a single nanite remaining. And imagine the look on Robotnick's face when he sees his new toy blown to bit without a freedom fighter in sight._

The memory came uncharacteristically to her with ease. Just as she had learned of Scor's fate from the radio she had taken from the Black Coat (one of Scor's personal body guards that had come crawling back her birth place to hide)

she had killed when she was still living in forest around the lab that had produced her, she had also learn of the Chameleon's fate at Sonnu's hands.

That memory. It had helped her just now. It was just now right? Tiana was not used to her memories answering her with clarity and precision, that in of itself was disorienting. She had help Sonnu stop the robotcizer plague from being released. Sonnu. She knew that was no more his name than Sonic had been his fathers (but with a name like Mariace could you blame him for adopting the name Sonikku?). She made a side note to research her half brother's real name some day. Since when was she so meteorically? Again she felt her head spin. Sonnu. The memory came with precision. "Son of Nobility" she knew from some of her mother's memories on royal titles. The bastard off spring of her poor father still crushed over the death of her mother, and the whore of a ditz turned Sister named Amy Thorn Rose. Why did her father ever have to rescue Rose from Robotnic? No, don't get angry. Save it for when you see Her again. Forget the symptom. Eliminate the disease. Sonnu was just the product of the bad mark on her father's memory, Rose was the cause. 

She looked into the glass, looking at the brownish steel hedgehog that stared back with it's glowing crimson eyes. No one really took notice of her, apparently Robians were no longer considered odd creatures anymore. 

It was funny. She had serious thought she was going to die when they thing blew up in her face. Maybe she was counting on it. After all. Wasn't she just as much a abomination as her half brother? He had been brought into the world by one filthy coupling. In a way, she had also.

Wasn't the virus suppose to make her stop thinking? To make her stop wondering? Maybe it hadn't gotten to her brain yet. Maybe it took longer to go. Maybe since she had been made and not born there was nothing to take away. No. Weather or not she was a creation or a person she was alive and with a mind of her own! She had fought too hard to stay alive in that jungle the chameleon had left her for dead in to not have a will of her own. She maybe of been dangerous psychotic and forgetful but mindless she was not!

Wait a minute! What had her great uncle Chuck once said to Sonic and Sally? That the robotcizer had been originally intended as a medical tool? It was meant to repair damaged parts of the body? Damaged. Like perhaps, a dysfunctional brain cause by conflicting genes in hedgehog and squirrel DNA? Had . . . that programming been passed onto these tiny machines from his original design? Was her brain . . . repaired? Was this sanity? She would have preferred the void of robotics. 

She needed to go somewhere . . . needed to do some thinking. Needed to think of something to do. And how to do it. Well, since she was a machine now, she might as well put that to her advantage, and go the one place that no sane living thing would go. 

The age for heroes was over. Thought Sonnu looking at the night sky, his wife and daughter asleep inside the house. After everything that had happened. Maybe now he could live a normal life. Yea, normal, when your mother is the head of the Sisterhood of Thorns and your wife is the former Guardian of the Floating Island. He remembered reading about his dad for the first time. In records kept away from Scor's torches on the Floating Island.

After the final battle with Robotnic, the Ancient Walkers had taken the Seven Chaos Emeralds back to the Special Zone, where they were to remain for all eternity; they had served their purpose in this world. That was it. No more super forms. No more power of the gods at mortal finger tips. The weaker sub emeralds remained scattered around the world, but their power could never come close to matching the power of the Seven Servers. Or reach the power point needed for the transformation he had heard so much about.

Tylor's companies where either being dismantled or craved up by his benefactors as payment. Sonnu found it strangely calming to know that Tylor's huge corporate empire was going to be in larger hands. The smaller a company was, Lara had told him once, the quicker it could respond to input, and less likely it was to become corrupted. He didn't know if she was right or not, but economics made his head spin almost as much as politics, and left such things for his wife to decide on.

Flame comments, suggestion, reactions good or bad, reviews, rants, insults, compliments, and the occasional constructive criticism, all welcome. 


	3. Soul Mates

Hats off to Spider-Man. Who says dead stories can't come back to life eh?  
  
Knothole was dead. But at least it was 'a was'. With Scor, it had been a 'never was'. And already less than ten years after Scor's rein ended, the Great Forest was slowly healing itself. Small shoots of grass could be found beneath the trucked in sand. Someday the forest that the Freedom Fighters had called home would live again. But that day was centuries away, and for now all that lived in earnest within the fake sandbox were the ghosts: those who hanged onto life like mad, refusing to let go and meet their end, those whose souls burned with a passion as undeniable and unquenchable as the unforgiving sun above, revenge. One wanted revenge for what should have been, what he had considered his right: what fate had had no authority to deny him. The other, revenge for what never was, and the painful knowledge what had happened in its place. And the maroon furred personification of all that pain. Weather by accident or an unforeseen design, the two would meet. And the Creator help the world when they did.  
  
-You are nowhere, this is nothing- That was what the sign said. It was old. Made all the older looking because no one had maintained it. Tiana found it strange no had bothered to knock it down. She remedied this act of neglect. She could guess who had put it up. Scor had made it his life mission to erase all traces of her father from history, along with all connected to him. Knotehole had been one of his first and major targets. The memories from both her gene donors were all quite pleasant of this place. It had been their home, their safe haven from Eggman's empire. And Scor had destroyed it all, burned it to the ground and covered it with sand. Pity the bastard had killed himself. Real pity. Tiana could think of a few dozen more creative ways for the skunk cat to meet his end then for him to just jump out a window.  
  
Tiana didn't yet know her thoughts were reflected by another on the opposite side of Knotehole.  
  
So this was Knotehole. He had thought about how many ways he would come here at last in victory, throw Sonic's bloody corpse down at the Freedom Fighter's feet and look at their expression of despair, or their looks of utter rage as they mobbed him all at once seek revenge for their friend, each to their deaths. Metalla would have really been pleased with either, as long as he had caused it. How long had he tried? How many ways had he tried? They hadn't been anywhere as contrived as his maker's (one would have to try and be as brilliant and idiotic as him), but each time Metalla had been desperate, more dangerous, and more reckless. He had come to respect Sonic as a rival and as an enemy. It had been the one reason he had been built, but in time it had become his personal reason as well. He had no other purpose. No other reason for being. And that hybrid bastard Scor had stolen it from him! Now he was just a relic, a memory of an age past! He took some sand in his claws and threw it up to the sky, doing his best impersonation of a laugh. Now here he stood! Knotehole destroyed! Sonic The Hedgehog dead and buried! The Kingdom of Acorn in rubble! Except he hadn't had anything to do with it . . .. Dammit! Only Sonnu, this mysterious offspring of Sonic and an unknown other, keep him from descending into the abyss like Silver had. If he could prove himself against Sonic, then he would prove himself against his offspring. Still, it might have just been a ghost of the target had dreamed about destroying for so long, but he could take a look around if he wanted to.  
  
It was strange, but right, she had never set foot on these grounds before. But she knew them as well, better, than the jungle surrounded metal plated hell hole she had grown up in. In her mind's eyes, she could see it all. The power ring pool. The hunts of Sally, Tails, Sonic, Ant', Bunnie, and Mina's family. They were all there, so real she could almost touch them. But she knew she couldn't. It was gone. All gone. All because of Scor. She felt like a ghost. She hadn't even been born before this place put to the torch but she felt as if she was only a memory walking among other memories that time had forgotten to sweep away. Tiana cursed time for that. She was a void. She had nothing. She was nothing. Her life meant nothing. Why was she still alive? What purpose could there possibly be for a reject clone created by a long fallen regime? Why didn't she just end it? Because father would be disappointed. Agh! She HAD no father. Just two gene donors and one psychotic chameleon that had raised her. All of them were dead. And to be frank she was quite happy that the ladder was dead. He had been a murdering pig (a dirty slur on Mobius maybe, but none the less it fit him) who deserved any end he got. She hoped it was painful, very painful, with lots of screaming and twisting. She wished she had been there, almost as much as she wished she had been there during the time Sonic and Sally had been alive. There was a tiny light inside her, a microscopic fragment of hope, that maybe, just maybe, they would have accepted a daughter not born of their passion for each other. A fantasy of the purest kind, but still it was her right to have fantasies right?  
  
Neither realized where they were going. One place they had to go. One place they had to see with their own eyes. In a warped sense the center of both their universes. Both admired for their own reasons. Both forever tied to this spot by fate. Where a blue hedgehog's hut had once stood.  
  
The sheer daze both were in was clear when they didn't notice each other until they were nearly on top of each other.  
  
It was a surreal moment.  
  
Metalla had no idea who this was. It was clearly a Robian. A self aware one too from the expression on her face. A hedgehog. Female. Barely the age Sonic was the two first fought. Such a little thing. "You." She electronically whispered.  
  
Metalla shouldn't have been surprised, after all, he had marked a nasty mark in the history book, well, until Scor had burned them all. He had been yet another reminder of Sonic. Something Scor could never allow. Pity, from what Metalla learned about Scor's cruelty and ruthlessness, they could have been friends. The female Robian stood up to her full meek height, her body in a clear fighting stance. "Bring it on!"  
  
Metalla tilted his head. He had long since evolved past the desire of fighting for fighting's sake. "I have no reason to kill you."  
  
"You're my father's enemy! That's reason enough!"  
  
"Could you be a bit more precise? I've made a lot of little girls orphans over the years."  
  
"Don't you recognize him?" She ranted. "Who I am? My father! The person who you're just a bad copy of! Sonic the Hedgehog! And if you WERE his killer, I'd do a lot worse to you then what I'm about to!"  
  
It was stunning Metalla's jaw plate's screws didn't pop out then and there to have half his face fall to the sand. "What? I theorized that Sonic had had a son but I had no idea he had screwed off a daughter too! Let's dance then! I'll send your head to your brother as a showing of what's coming for him!"  
  
"As if! He doesn't give a damn about me!" She ranted. "No one gives a damn about me!"  
  
"Suck it!" Metalla went into his own combat stance.  
  
"You first! At least you were GIVEN a purpose beyond just seeing if it was possible to make you!"  
  
Metalla would have normally taken the chance to attack first during the girl's raving, but he had been out of the loop for TOO long, he needed information. "What do you mean?"  
  
"My father was Sonic! And my mother was Princess Sally Acorn. But I wasn't born from them! I'm a crossbreed clone of the two of them!"  
  
That should have been genetically impossible Metalla calculated. This girl's programming had to be malfunctioning. But still, he saw Sally in her, the same way he could see Sonic in his girl, her design was akin between Mecha Sonic and the records of Sally Acorn when she was roboticized for a short time. The math didn't add up, but the conclusion was inescapable. He knew he should attack her anyway. He knew that her origin didn't matter. That she was a part of Sonic. Something for him to test himself against. There should have been no reason for him to hesitate.  
  
However, one thing declared they would not fight each other. One thing ordered they were two of a pair. The one thing brought before them a mirror, in which they saw the other. It was the one thing that joined them together. The one thing had connected them. The one thing that defined their entire existence: Revenge.  
  
Dammit. Why did he have to get his job on a rainy night? Not that would have liked to have this job any time night, or day for that matter. He knew he had to put his time in here like everyone else, but that didn't mean he had to like it! Standing guard over the remains of the bastard of the century was not his ideal career choice. At least it was only night out of the entire month, the other thirty days it was someone else's bad luck. The rain came down in a drizzle, blocking out the moon and the stars, lightning on occasion lighting up the graveyard. At least he never read any horror novels, this place creeped him out enough without any help. Lightning flashed and thunder roared a moment after, showing the various tombstones and statues in half-light for a split second. Unreal laughter like those of an electric demon filled the air. The hell? The lightning flashed again, there were too figures on top of the walls who hadn't been there a second before. They came and went with the flash. Oh great. Now he was going crazy.  
  
The Almighty pointed her finger at the earth once again and the guard KNEW he saw two –things- leaning against the gravesite's entrance.  
  
His throat tightening the guard undid the safety on his gun. He never had a chance to fire a shot. He lost all feeling below his neck in a flash, he couldn't breath: he felt himself rolling for a few seconds till he saw his own lifeless corpse above him. He felt two cold metallic sets of claws pick him up; he last image was of a pair of cold expressionless electronic eyes.  
  
The next day the statue was found in pieces, none of the precious gems on it taken, Scor's body (fixed up greatly after it high speed contact with the ground at the time of his demise) lay in gut retching chunks on the ground, he had to perform a DNA test to even tell it had been Scor's body. As for the guard, his body was found at the feet of the statue's remains, his head was seated neatly on the steps up to Scor's gravesite. The police knew they had a hard time ahead of them. Scor had left many enemies even in death; even after so many years Scor's memory had been forgotten. They were countless people and groups who would have done this. The guard had been simply beheaded, his head moved from its landing spot, (A joke? A warning?) to the steps so it would be the first thing seen by the poor soul who had happened on the tyrant's grave the next day. The statue hadn't been blown up, cut apart, or even pulled/pushed off it's base, it had been smashed, like a giant first had struck it countless times. But there was no way in chaos that, -that- kind of equipment could be just moved to and from the place of destruction without anyone noticing. And even with the rain, shouldn't they have left SOME kind of tracks? So many things didn't make sense. And the detective put in charge of the case had a very sick feeling that it would become more clear when –they- struck again. Yes, they would strike again. There was no doubt. The words 'WHOSE NEXT?' had been written in blood on the gravesite's circular stonewall on the side, engraved by what looked like claw marks in solid rock.  
  
Flames, rants, comments, reactions, rants, love, hate, corrections, suggestions of all kinds, and occasional constructive criticism completely welcome. 


	4. Rapture

I apologize for this one in particular. It has a relatively small cast. And was decent and fun and was an intended canon part of the verse. Joshura stopped writing fanfiction in the middle of his third and final story in his Sonic resurrection trilogy. He was told and accepted by his editor that his fanfictions were something he had to leave behind. I wish I had that strength of will.

For those of you curious, a nihilist Shadow The Hedgehog was going to be the antagonist for the third story.

Dang, and people say my spelling and grammar is awful NOW... reading how it used to be, geez'. And I thought my writing is depressing now!

The saddest part of all of this, is that Joshura never completed Burning Mobius. That is the final sadness in all of this.

**First is a few revamped lines that were lost when the previous chapters were written back when I was a slave to blind ambition when it came to fanfiction, perhaps I still am: **

Tiana Needed to go somewhere . . . needed to do some thinking.

_You are Nowhere. This is Nothing. _ The sign was wood, old, and had suffered from it's exposure to the elements causing the pain to peal. It was so decayed she had to try several times before finnaly figuring out what it had said. The sun baked on the false Fool's Desert: the Great Dead Forest.

Scor had burned down this forest as part of his attempt to erase Sonic from history, and to set an example for those who would disobey him. It had failed.

But this was not nothing. This had been Knotehole. The staging ground from where the Freedom Fighters lead by Sally Alicia Acorn had launched there raids on Robotropious.

Even though she hadn't been there, she remembered. For her name was Tiana Alicia Hedgehog, her number had been Clone-09, but she had despised that identification from the first time she heard it.

Even at night, Scor's statue stood proud and tall.

Then came the laughs from the darkness. Which was just so much like the real thing it could be identified as such. Lighting flashed with the soul less laugher. He saw it. A destint hedghog shape,

The darkness laughed.

The lighting flashed, the skunk saw two hedghog silolets. Their only visible feather was their eyes. Red, pircing points of light.

The guard fired at the source of the hiddious mockery of a real laugh.

The comma implies I was still in the middle of writing this sentence. Geeze. When you stop and take a look at these fanfictions years later, you realize how immaterial they all are. Like World of Warcraft, you have only the memories and the feelings that you can't even share with people who you can come into contact with in the real world.

At any rate, let the show begin, this is a summary of how things would have been:

Akkir grave was stumbled upon by Metalla and Tiana on their way to Mobotropolis to begin extracting their revenge. While no one is about to notice a grave in the middle of nowhere being desecrated and blasted to bits, Scor's oversized memorial is another story. You do NOT want to know what Tiana does with Akkir's remains.

Picking up news reports that their first act of murder and vandalism (though the latter is argued by some as public clean up) Tiana and Metalla cheer.

Metalla unofficially adopts Tiana as his child, united in their deranged goals, and both having a craving for a filling in the void in their souls. Tiana for a empathic father figures, and Metalla seeing Tiana as the closest things he'll ever get to Sally. Yes that is messed up and was supposed to be.

"We have both spend our lives in our personal hells my daughter. But hell has no fury akin to that of it's prisoners!"

Of course Tiana thinks about her half brother and her own demented hatred towards him, but now she sees it in a much more objective light, but is still skewed. This goes against my later beliefs and theory that since the original 'no free will' bug in robotocization was an error, therefore the mentally ill would be rendered sane by it's effects. In fact, her insanity is stated to be the reason for her free will even after being infected by Taylor's nanits! However by this point it had already become established in previous stories that her mind at this point wasn't completely healed.

Sonnu . . . no, he was symptom, not the disease. Tiana knew what the disease was. It was an old woman who called herself a Sister and comforted those around her by sleeping with them!

"Sonnu is mine, the honor of killing Amy Throne Rose belongs to you."

"Thank you father."

Taylor's old business partners, along with Scor's surviving loyalists, many now older men, are slowly, sadistically, and gleefully picked off by Metalla and Tiana.

"Some one is killing off Scor's old supporters one by one." Commented the officer.

"Can you really blame them?" Said Lara-Su off handedly.

Perhaps in her sick mind making a point, Tiana her robian form in 'modern times' no longer as greatly a form of discrimination, Tiana (her existence and identity not exactly public knowledge) attempts up front to join the all male paladin core that serves as the counter-part to the all female sisterhood that Amy is a part of. Of course she's turned on a matter of policy, outraged at this 'injustice' even though she knew this was the only logical outcome, she goes on a slaughter spree.

This of course gets the authorities attention, and she lingers around long enough for them to show up. Metalla choses to join with his foster daughter at this time. The police are caught off guard by the two war machines, thinking them just mundane robians (which Tiana technically is but Metalla could have upgraded her), the police order them to surrender, to no avail. "Lock on target men! Fire!"

The bullets prove ineffective ( Scor had repealed nearly all Acorn Kingdom had done, and that included the taboo on bullet based weapons which had been integrated too far into society for Elise to remove when he returned to power.).

"This is the part where you say, 'oh no our weapons are useless!' " Said Metalla without humor. The troops only turned and ran. "And then the hero makes his entrance."

Thinking about now, I realize that Sonnu didn't have his father's adrenaline addiction, and thus wasn't one to jump right into the action without giving it much forethought. However, given that it happens right near the house hold of the paladins, which of course has links to the sister hood, he would show up.

"Heh, you emulate Sonic without even realizing it!"

"What?"

"Doesn't that ditz tell you anything?" Mocked the Robian.

Sonnu's mouth fell open. He simply stared at now the two killing machines in front of him. No, no it couldn't be her! It wasn't possible! This was madness! But there was no mistaking the new machine next to Metalla.

Sonnu of course would be freaked out and confused by Metal Sonic, having may or may not have heard of it. Though Metalla has heard of Sonnu by now of course, and gives a quick run down on his reason for wanting to kill Sonnu. Of course the return of his ghost from the past is overshadowed by Sonnu seeing his half sister is alive!

When 'son of nobility' asks why Tiana is doing this she replies,

"Don't you believe in justice Sonnu?" Said Tiana looking into her half brother's brown eyes with the those two crimson points of light. "Scor wanted nothing less than to have our father erased from memory. To have him not even be a rumor, to have him be as if he had never existed! I only lived because I was Akkiar's personal pet project, and that Scor was fond of that bastard." She hissed. "I'm just returning the favor!"

Dear Creator. Thought Sonnu, he recognized her jacket for what it was now. He had seen them in Scor's palace! It was the skin of a Mobian Squirrel. He remembered the dead Black Coat they had found in the same building as Tiana. The truth so oblivous to everyone but himself. He hadn't wanted to believe it.

Metalla again makes clear his desire to dominate and kill Sonnu. Tiana makes it clear her desire to destroy Sonnu's entire family. The two machines depart and Sonnu is too emotionally shocked to follow them.

In an apparently act to torture him, Tiana makes an attack on Lotus, but doesn't kill her... instead she cuts off one of her ears... this is of course a strong make up call to Sonnu, his wife calls him an idiot given the people Tiana had ALREADY KILLED and maiming someone close to him is what makes him up to reality just displays his own foolishness.

Lara visits her brother's Crowe's grave, while Sonnu visits the grave of his best friend Rull. Both seeks either advice or just a release valve.

Tiana's next move is an attack on St. Thorns Rose herself and St. Mina. Mina of course has had her own share of problems. Ash was publically executed by Scor he tried to avenge Mina's loss of her eyes and tongue by Scor. Akkir also killed Mina's second lover Tails in a duel very similar to the one that he fell to Sonnu in.

"I told you I would make you hate me Rosy Rascal . . . . I don't plan on killing you until I see that calm face of your shattar it's cool and calm facade!"

"Why is it so important that I hate you?" Amy said planly.

"Because! I know you St. Whore, Sonic's memories of you are quite clear in my mind. A ditzy little girl whose presence dad feared with dread knowing he was going to have to save her worthless neck before the day was out! I know your a weakling at heart! That your love and caring bit is all an act! But I want to see it for myself so I can take pleasure in the mental image for the rest of eturnity after I feed your weathered corpes to the worms!"

However, the old woman had long since left her pettiness behind, along with her childish fears behind, and tell Tiana that in spite of Tiana's alternator Tiana mind is still in a fog. Tiana flies into a rage and causes horrible damage to the cathedral but never lays a hair on Amy, determined to see the old woman break first. But Amy refuses to. However Amy sweats bullets when she comes back to face with Metalla, the thing of her nightmares. But Tiana is aggravated that Metalla was able to make Amy cower where she couldn't!

Agitated Tiana leaves, and Metalla also leaves behind. Amy nearly suffers a heart attack.

The two robians leave a path of destruction so precise and methodical it's obvious that they want to be followed. They broadcast a demand for Sonnu to come to them or they would kill his family members in his sleep!

Sonnu complies against the wishes of his loved ones, and finds himself at a the oil procesing planet at Oil Ocean. Both bots attack him, but Sonnu while defending himself refuses to fight back, also Sonnu slowly begins to realize that the robians aren't even trying their hardest, and are purposely leaving themselves open at several points and are goading him into attack them way too much. Finally it all clicks and Sonnu realizes both robians are seeking a warrior's death. Once Sonnus is dead, Metalla will be without purpose again. And once Amy is gone, Tiana realizes she doesn't have any idea what to do with herself.

Sonnu stands perfectly still and spreads his arms out, refusing to play the game, much to the rage of the two robians. However, the damage caused during the battle starts to cause the plant to go up in flames! Left with no other choice, Metalla saves both Tiana AND Sonnu from the blast!

The police as it turns out has been waiting outside now armed with REAL firepower, enough to destroy the two death machines. Metalla his power cells near exhaustion from protecting the others from the blast uses himself as a shield for Tiana without even thinking about it so Tiana is damaged opposed to destroyed. After which he curses his own selfless act.

"Damn you . . . gonna die like you anyway, . . . see ya soon . . . Amy, Sally, Miles, Sonic, Tiana . . ."

So Metalla finally fatally goes off-line. Tiana is taken to a hospital. Nanits that were originally made to enable robians to be 'cured' of their state or just wishing the 'pleasure' of rotting in the ground opposed to rusting on the ground are used on her as a means to try and save her as she slowly goes off line despite everyone's best efforts. The result however is much as what once happened with Bunnie Rabbot with the organic and cybernetic sides of herself at total war with each other, slowly killing her. Amy mentally reads her comatose mind that this is due to Tiana's own broken mind and neurosis'.

Lara uses a guardian technique to allow Sonnu (at his request) to enter Tiana's mind... facing several psychological horrors, he find Tiana and is just barely able to piece her together. And for perhaps the first time in her life she's made whole. The mental image of the angry, lonely and sad little girl Sonnu finds at the center of Tiana's psyche influences the nanits and give her the body of a child back before she was violated by Scor, giving her a new lease on life. Sonnu adds one more lie to his growing list so Tiana as a sane person doesn't need to suffer what she did while mad.

Sonnu also visits the lab where Tiana was born and gives her eight siblings a proper burial at last.

('This takes place near the end of the story, though I haven't gotten past redoing the first paragraph, (and I'm using our NOT FAIR writing parts as the beginning of the story.) Or writing a full page yet. I have to write this now while I have the will to.' Dang! I'm a creature of impulses, what did I know in those days when I wrote that? Heh, most would say exactly as much as I do now.)

Question. Should Lotus know Tiana the girl she meets, is the same as the machine that tried to kill her? Perhaps it's best she doesn't find out until she comes of age, so she and Tiana can hit it off as friends and girls 'of their age.'

Idea, as Sonnu is about to leave the 'garbage room', he looks again to the perfectly preserved remains of clones 01 though 08, all at various stages of development, and then does something he can only describe later as an impulse, and buries each of the clones near the base with a Roman numeral marking the make shift grave stone of each one.

She was alive. The sun valiantly slashed though the early morning cloud cover creating a pattern of shadows on the street and buildings below, it also created a pattern of shadows and light across Tiana's thirteen year old form.

Over the hospital balcony, Tiana touch her forearm, it felt strange to be flesh and blood again after all those months. Flesh felt so soft, so warm, so different from the hard cold steel she had gotten used to. The city was still being repaired, and would take weeks before restoration was complete, but the scars would last Tiana a life time. Now she had a life to live, probably for the first time in her existence, she was an experiment at best to Akkiar, and at worst, his play thing, the brief time with Sonnu, and then with Metalla, were only transitions, steps in her dance, pain, revenge, death, pain, revenge, death, then came new steps to break the cycle, regret, loss, guilt, remorse, things she had never felt before, it hurt to feel, truly feel, but it reminded Tiana she had a heart beating in her chest, machines didn't feel, the dead did not feel, once Tiana envied them, but now the sensation of living was in every part of her being, it made her feel, think, remember, remember beyond Akkiar, remember beyond the glass womb, to her mother and father, to the memories she had of them, of people she had never met but knew all so well, an ever optimistic and idealistic Kitesune, a brilliant but befuddled Walrus, a half robotcized rabbit that had never allowed her scrape with non living pull her down, a cowardly yet noble coyote, she could remember each of there faces, remember each of there moods and styles, she remembered how mom had always been mad at dad when he just took off without plan or forethought on a mission and somehow always came back in one piece, her mother's convection that she would be damned before she wed someone before Tiana's father. The girl hedgehog's mind was whole for the first time in her life, but then again, her life had just started, she had existed before, she bad been born, raised, bleed, hurt, but she hadn't really lived, and with clarity, came remembrance. All the memories she had had before about Sonic and Sally, each from their points of view, were no longer in conflict with her own memories, yes, she felt alive. And yet she still felt out of place, this world, this life, she was living it about thirty something years too late, she would now not remove Sonnu from existence for anything now, but still, she felt somewhat alone, mommy and daddy had died several years before she was even born, and she had eight siblings who had paved her way into the world with their lives. Tiana didn't even realize she was crying.

A warm and gentle hand, bearing the battle scars with the endless battle with old age was place on the side of her neck, being careful to avoid the quills, though not as hard as a pure blood hedgehog, they could cut just as easily.

The little girl in a little girl's body hadn't heard the Sister come in, but in her current mood, Tiana wasn't surprised, she still had all her three life times worth of fighting experience, but these new emotion set everything within her off balance.

"What is wrong child?" Asked a female hedgehog whose quills and head fur had long since turned from neon pink to dull silver.

"Why?" Tiana said though her silent tears. "Why did I have be born this way? Why did I have to come into the world this way? Mom and dad were dead before I was even born. I spent my entire childhood under the eyes of a devil. And left for dead in an environment that wanted nothing more than to see me rot. My life has been an endless dance, Pain, Revenge, Death, Pain, Revenge, Death. I believed I would never break the cycle, so I accepted it with open arms rather than fight it."

"But the dance is broken Tiana, you live, this is a new dance, and only you can place the steps." Replied Amy Thorn Rose.

Tiana was silent for a time.

"You say your gifted with limited prophecy, what will become of me?"

"Only what you decide child." Was Amy's instant response.

"Child . . . you know I never really was one, I was a toy to Akkiar the first thirteen years of my life. Then I was a creature for the next eight. Then a demoness for just over six months. This is the first time that I am a child . . ." Tiana shuddered, affection such an alien sensation for her she wasn't sure how to react. "Dammit! I wish I could roll back time, by the Walkers, by the Creator, any force that lives in the light, I wish it could just be the way it was. Sonic and Tails racing each other, the Freedom Fighters causing Eggman no end of frustration, Sonic and Knuckles sending each other to the emergency room every time they were in the same time zone. Why couldn't of things just stayed that way? Why couldn't I've of been born into that world and not this one?" Tiana asked of Amy, fate, creation, anyone who would answer her.

"Because then it wouldn't be life." Amy said, fighting to keep a door closed in her mind before memories much like the ones Tiana was living entered her consciousness and forced her to the state the daughter of Sonic and Sally was in. "Life is change, the stones have no life, and only they do not chance Tiana. And when the winds come, they only crumble, they can not survive change, that is what makes us alive: change."

"I wish it had stayed the same just a little bit longer."

"The winds of change wait for no one, that is why we must live our lives while we can, because they will never come again."

"Is that why we grow old and die? Because if we lived forever, we would not change, and therefore not be alive?"

"Your father and mother are alive in one way Tiana."

Tiana looked up at her.

"In you, 'Immortality is not found within thy self but within thy offspring.' You say you have the memories of Sonic and Sally. Their nobility, their feelings, their souls, they live on in you."

"In you too." Tiana whispered. "Sally considered you her friend, never her rival. She was more jealous of Mina than you." Tiana actually smiled. "And to Sonic, from the memories at time I have of him at least, you were the little sister he never got the chance to have with his parent robotcized."

Amy seemed to age years in seconds.

"No Tiana, not in me, not for much longer, I will be with your father and mother soon."

Tiana now looked in the aged hedgehog's eyes in wordless shock as Amy continued.

"Cancer," Amy said, pausing for a brief second, "Breast Cancer, it is in remission now, but soon it will go into a new, and final stage. This I know."

Tiana felt cold metal as she slowly put her hands on the rails for support, her eyes not seeing the world in front of her. Rosy Rascal, the little girl who had driven Sonic nuts with her endless pursuits, now an old woman dying of cancer, now it finally hit what Amy meant. [i]_ The winds of change wait for no one, that is why we must live our lives while we can, because they will never come again._ [/i]

"I-I" Tiana started but found it hard to finish. "I'm sorry. I no longer find any pleasure in the aspect of death."

"Don't be sad, I've lived a full life, I've seen the birth of my granddaughter . . . and the healing of my step daughter."

Tiana slowly turned her head still digesting everything she had just been told. Everything she had just learned.

"D-does, Sonnu know?" Tiana asked meekly.

"You are the first one besides my physician to learn of this."

"W-why? Why me? A month ago, I tried to kill your granddaughter on holy ground."

"Because, you've been given a chance to live your life, before you could only live the life Akkiar made for you, now you can live your own life, free of him, so you can remember life is precious, only because it is not eternal in this world."

Tiana felt the wind blow under her hospital gown, a chill ran up her spine. She had to think of what to say next.

"Tell me what you want of me Sister Rose, name it, and I will do it." This was the first time Tiana had ever addressed Amy as such.

"Only what I have told you little one, live your life, and second, tell others about Sonic, Sally, Miles, and all the rest, add no faults, pretend no false virtues, say only the way things once were. Take the good with the bad, and express it as such."

Tiana could only nod at this. Then she asked a question she did not know she was speaking before it came flying out of her mouth.

"Do you love me?"

Amy opened her mouth, Tiana stopped her.

"Not as a Sister. But, as . . . someone who loved my father, can you love me . . . the way you love Sonnu?" Tiana asked in total fear of the answer.

Amy didn't answer in words, she only knelt and embrace the daughter of her lovers' first beloved.

"Did Akkiar ever tell you what your name means Tiana?" Amy whispered into one of Tiana's pointed ears.

"I thought it was whim he had at the time with as much meaning attached to it as the filth underneath his boots."

"To him in all likelihood it was, but it's actually a word in old Mobian dialect. It means 'love'."

Tiana was not prepared for that answer and did not respond, until at last she shed a single tear of complement. The two hedgehogs held each other until the sun had burned though the last of the clouds that had crept in from the dark of the night before, announcing to all that the new dawn begun long ago, and the time had at long last come to live.

Ok. Feed back, response, corrections?

**~fin **

**Original skeleton summary. **

Farewell buddy, I know it'll never be finnished. But... I think that's the fate of pretty much all fanfics. And even the ones that are completed, fall into the ether.

'Love' and Metallix continue to reek havoc on Taylor' old business' and business partners. And ultimate begin their plan to destroy Sonnu as well.

First they target Sonnu's daughter. Then Mina. And target Amy herself.

Ultimately they lead Sonnu to the processing plant at Oil Ocean, where both robians intend to die in the battle with Sonnu, unable to see beyond this task.

The battle is gruesome, but Sonnu refuses to play the game eventually, roping Metallix and Tiana out of their victory.

Metallix in a change of heart, saves Tiana and Sonnu from the explosion that follows, but the police aim and attack the two killer robians on sight, Metallix able to shield Tiana at the cost of his own destruction.

Tiana herself is seriously damaged, fatally so. But nanits developed to be used on old robians who wanted to become flesh and blood again or simply die and rot rather than die and rust, are used... and revert Tiana back to before she was violated by Scor (a lost programming error).

Amy tells Tiana that Amy is dying, but wants Tiana to live her life all the same, in fact, BECAUSE of it.

**Cast of Characters **

Sister Rose

Sister Mina

Sonnu

Tiana

Metalla

Lara-Su

Lotus-Su

Deceased:

Crowe The Echidna

Scor St. John

Godiva St. John

Taylor

Rull The Fox

Akkir The Chameleon

**Reviewers: **

Ico

Z Icera

Zyon Icera

Aeon, "I accept this key: three locks on the door to the final task still remain. And less than nine days remain before the hinges vanish forever..."


End file.
